50% Bonus (Up to 87% Bonus) When You Transfer Starwood Points to US Airways – Some GREAT Opportunities Here

Through March 31st, US Airways is giving a 50% bonus when you transfer miles from a hotel program partner into Dividend Miles. They have a bunch of hotel partners, but the only one worth considering here is Starwood.

You’ll get 37,500 Dividend Miles when you transfer 20,000 Starwood points into the program (an 87% bonus). Keep in mind that US Airways has a few award redemptions that are bargains. For example, 35k/60k (coach/biz) for off-peak travel from the US to Hawaii, Europe and South America. That means coach tickets to those places are now just 20,000 SPG miles during off-peak times. Crazy. Africa is typically 70k/110k; with this promo it’s 40k/60k SPG points.

I rarely proactively transfer points, even with a bonus, unless I have a specific trip in mind. I did do it in 2008 with the just silly 150% transfer bonus from SPG to Delta (I’m still sitting on the 300,000 Skymiles from that one). This isn’t quite that good (in fact, it’s roughly half that good), but if you generally use your SPG points for air travel (rather than hotel redemption), you should seriously consider this (I’m considering taking 79,999k SPG and turning it into 142,500 US Airways miles). I would do more, but you’re only eligible for one bonus and you can only transfer up to 79,999 SPG points at a time. I was thinking of combining my wife’s account with mine (since you can have household accounts) and then transferring into our respective Dividend Miles accounts, but the name on the SPG account must match the Dividend Miles account, so I don’t think that will work.

9 Comments.

Unfortunately, I don’t have very many Starwood Points right now but I do have a fair amount of Priority Club points. Do you think transfering Priority Club points is not a good deal? Not sure yet,if I’d rather have miles or rooms but was thinking that US Air miles would be worth more than Priority points. Would love your opinion. Thanks!

You’ll earn 3,000 US Airways miles for every 10,000 Priority Club points that you transfer — that’s pretty weak compared to Starwood. Plus, 30,000 Priority Club points would earn you a free night at a low-level Intercontinental Hotel. But that would only be 9,000 US Airways miles. A free domestic coach ticket would cost you more than 80,000 Priority Club points, or almost 3 nights at an Intercontinental. Seems to me like you’d be better off keeping the points in Priority Club.

Thanks for the feedback and now another question. You say; “I was thinking of combining my wife’s account with mine (since you can have household accounts) and then transferring into our respective Dividend Miles accounts, but the name on the SPG account must match the Dividend Miles account, so I don’t think that will work.” However, I thought that once I transferred the points (in this case from my husband’s account to get mine to 20K) then they would now be my points. I could then transfer them to US Air and that it would work. Or am I missing something really basic here? Thanks again.

Well I wouldn’t be “combining accounts” but transferring a set amount of points from one account to the other. That’s the way it appears to work when I investigated on their website. I guess I’ll call Starwood to confirm. Thanks.

Hope I am not being a bother here, but can you explain why you would want to “combine SPG accounts” instead of just transfering points from one to the other? (Always trying to make sure I am not missing an angle that I need to be considering.) Thanks yet once again!

In this case you wouldn’t want to. I had forgotten about transferring between accounts.

In general you might want to combine accounts because you and your spouse could get separate credit card bonuses, and then combine them into one account. If you keep the accounts separate you might not have enough points for an award, for example.